What Happened to Sherlock Holmes
by Samuel MacIntyre
Summary: To his dying day, John Hamish Watson will deny that he and Sherlock were anything more than flatmates and very good friends.


**Okay. So this is loosely based off an idea that I had in the shower this morning. Of course all my best ideas come to me while I'm all wet and drippy and scrubbing shampoo through my hair.**

**This isn't my usual thing, and normally I don't support Rule 63 (Genderbending) fics. However, this one was begging to be written. This will be a oneshot, but it will be a LONG oneshot.**

**It's a bit sappy, a whole lot angsty, a little bit fluffy... In otherwords, I've tried to put in as much of the _good_ things I want in a fic into this one. What this _isn't_ is something I'm used to writing.**

**WARNINGS: Fluff, potential smut, suggestive content, genderbending, BAMF-ery, fem!Sherlock (Or FemLock as Claire calls it), character death, drama... I think that covers most of it. I own nothing except the basic concept of the story; the series belongs to Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, and the BBC, and the characters belong to the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Some of the italicized portions are dialogue and actions taken directly from the television series; some of the italicized portions are my own interpretation or entirely mine.  
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**And now, on with the show.**

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><p><strong>Summary: <strong>To his dying day, John Hamish Watson will deny that he and Sherlock were anything more than flatmates and very good friends. John will do this not because it is true, and not because he is ashamed of what he and Sherlock shared, but rather because the pain that comes with her memory is too great. This is the story of what happened to Sherlock Morganna Holmes, and why John Hamish Watson does not want to remember her love.

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><p>"<em>Is that it?" <em>

_ She brushes past him carelessly, coat flaring behind her. "Is that what?"_

_ "We only just met and we're going to go look at a flat?"_

_ "Problem?"_

_ "We don't know a thing about each other. I don't know where we're meeting. I don't even know your name."_

_ Sherlock's eyes lock on his face, and he thinks he sees a shadow of a smile on her mouth. "I know you're an army doctor who's been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you've got a brother who's worried about you but you won't go to him for help because you don't approve of him, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. I know that your therapist thinks your limp is psychosomatic, quite correctly I'm afraid. ... That's enough to be going on, don't you think?" Sherlock smirks slowly and turns back toward the door. "The name's Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221 Baker Street." She winks and sweeps out, leaving John blinking and stunned._

_ "Yeah," said Mike, when John shoots him a baffled look. "She's always like that."_

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><p>The flat is very empty when Sherlock is not there. Sherlock is not a large woman, but she is very... Present. Her presence overwhelms a room, fills it, takes over the room and every person in it. That is part of what John loved... What John <em>loves<em> about her. Her presence. Her charisma. The way she fills up a room and even a building with herself. John has never met another person that can do that as well as Sherlock. Her things still lie about the room; the skull on the mantlepiece is hers. The checked cushion on the couch is hers. The notes sticky-taped to the mirror over the fireplace are hers. Her dressing gown is still flung carelessly over the end of their... Of _his_ bed. Her coat hangs behind the door, where she liked to keep it and where he put it when he brought it in for the last time.

John does not spend much time in the flat anymore. It reminds him too much of her.

Sarah has tried to console him, with little success. Mycroft has been more insufferable than ever, though John knows he is trying hard to be the good man. He also knows that Mycroft, deep down, misses Sherlock as much as he does.

John spends more time at the clinic now that Sherlock is gone. It doesn't make him miss her any less, but when he is treating the minor ailments that come through his door it reminds him that there are still a few people that he can help. He couldn't help her, but he can cure the sniffles, cure the aching joints, set the broken fingers and occasionally the larger bones.

John does not believe his therapist when she says that he will move past this loss. She never met Sherlock, she doesn't understand what the loss of that person in his life means to John. John knows that some part of him will never let go. Some part of him will always remember the feel of waking up next to her, her dark curls tousled and sticking to his neck and shoulder, her breath warm on his skin as she sleeps. Sherlock never slept so well as the nights she spent tucked into his side, long limbs curled and tucked so she fit against him.

John does not sleep in his bed, or in the room that was Sherlock's at the start. He sleeps mostly on the couch these days. He bought a new duvet and pillow, and sleeps there because his bed, _their_ bed still smells like her.

When he thinks about it, it hasn't been that long since he lost her. It has only been a few weeks, not quite yet a month. The days blend into each other, and though he knows that it hasn't been that long he isn't truly _aware_ of the time.

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><p>"<em>That... That thing you offered to do. That was... That was good." She lifts a hand, fingers still curled around the handle, and scratches what he assumes to be an itch more with the barrel than her fingers. It seems incredibly stupid to him, since the safety's clearly off and her finger is still on the trigger.<em>

_ "I hope no one saw that..." He leaned back against the changing room, breathing hard and shaking a little._

_ "What?"_

_ "You, ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool. People might talk."_

_ "People do little else." Her hand lowers again and she looks over at him. Despite himself, he smiles, and she smiles back, her Cupid's bow of a mouth curling upward at the corners. They laugh, the same breathless and wheezy way they laughed after that first mad dash through London together._

_ John thinks for a moment, a very brief moment, that they are safe. He isn't strapped into an explosive vest, Moriarty has gone, and Sherlock is still very much alright._

_ At least, John thinks (and fervently wishes) that that is the case. Of course, his hopes are about to turn out to be all for naught._

_ "Sorry boys, I'm so changeable!"_

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><p>John had always complained about the trouble that Sherlock got them both into on a semi-regular basis. Now, when there is nothing for him to do except work at the clinic and come home to an empty flat, John misses it. He does not miss the danger, no matter what the intermittent tremor in his left hand and Mycroft say. He does not miss the adrenaline rush, mad dashes all around London, and the ridiculous stunts that sometimes left them bruised and battered and bloody. John does not miss the battlefield.<p>

What he misses is doing all those things with Sherlock. Like the way her presence could fill a room, when Sherlock set off on another of her wild adventures you couldn't help but follow her along. She swept you up like a storm surge and took you with her, and you were helpless against her force.

No, John does not miss the danger. John misses sharing the danger with _Sherlock_.

There is not very much danger in soothing coughs and sniffles and splinting broken bones. There is not much danger, but there is much good that John can do.

Lestrade occasionally comes by for a cup of tea. John knows that the loss of Sherlock has been hard on him as well. Before John and Sherlock ever were, there was Sherlock and Lestrade. Not in the sense that there _was_ Sherlock and Lestrade; Sherlock never shared with Lestrade quite the level of intimacy that she shared with John. Sherlock and Lestrade had a mutual agreement and a good partnership.

Sherlock always claimed that she was a sociopath, but Lestrade knows that wasn't quite the case. There were brief flashes of emotion in her that very few people picked up on. But Lestrade, after years spent on the force and subsequently years spent around Sherlock learned to pick up on those little ticks. He learned when she needed a moment alone, he knew when she needed absolute silence in a room to think, and he knew when she just needed him to turn up at her run-down little flat with hot soup and a Thermos of coffee.

Lestrade understands why Sherlock never opened up to him like she did to John. Lestrade prevented that through being too professional, too clearly _only_ a coworker. He can't help but think, now that Sherlock is gone, that maybe if he had been more like John, more like a friend and a coworker rolled into one, that he might have captured Sherlock's heart the way John did.

It is a little late for speculation, but Lestrade and John discuss this over a cup of tea one afternoon anyway. John understands Sherlock's appeal, understands why she would be so attractive to a man like Lestrade. He understands, and he cannot bring himself to resent Lestrade for wanting what he had. There is a resigned sort of understanding, and in some strange way they both find comfort in in.

Lestrade finds a little more comfort in Molly. While she was never quite friends with Sherlock (the other woman just sort of rubbed her fur the wrong way), Molly understands that Lestrade needs someone right now. When he turns up at her flat one night, not long after Sherlock is gone, drunk off his ass and needing company, she lets him fall into her arms. He wakes up on her couch in the morning with a splitting headache and Molly, ever gentle Molly, nurses him through the pain. She is not a substitute for Sherlock; no one could ever be a substitute for Sherlock. But Molly is something concrete and real, someone Lestrade can run to when he needs it.

Even the officers at the Met who claimed to hate Sherlock notice her absence. They know what happened to her, but the vast majority of them can't bring themselves to care. Donovan and Anderson still constantly look around as though expecting her to swan in and announce that they'd been sleeping together again. Dimmock still looks over his shoulder to make sure she isn't hovering there, snooping in the file of the latest case he's been assigned.

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><p>"<em>Sh-sherlock... What...?" A soft pressure against his side wakes him, dark curls tickling his shoulder and a persistent, spicy perfume invades his nose. "What are you doing?"<em>

_ Her hand wanders under the lowest edge of his t-shirt, pushing it up his stomach. She does this occasionally, crawls into bed next to him and runs her hands all over him. As much as she can reach, anyway. She's like some sort of vine, all long limbs and heat as she crawls on top of him and straddles his hips. "I need you, John." Her voice is low, ragged, and the hands that splay out on his chest are quivering. He knows, deep down, that she's taken something again. She won't tell him as much, but it's all there in the shake in her hands and the ragged edges of her voice. _

_ "Sherlock... Look at me." He brushes the dark curtain of her hair back, and she lifts her head just enough to meet his eye. He can't see her very well in the darkness of his room, can't see her eyes. She doesn't give him a chance to study her. She lunges down, crushing her mouth against his and pulling his breath right out of his lungs. Her hands are everywhere at once; up his t-shirt, down the front of his pajama pants, in his hair to crush him harder into the kiss. He doesn't even register when her own trousers are gone, doesn't register that she's virtually naked above him until he's taken into tight, silken heat. _

_ She writhes over him, back arched and her hair tumbling loose around her face and her shoulders. The bed creaks under them both as she moves, hands clutched into his t-shirt. Soon enough, without much help from him, he feels her stiffen and arch, letting out a stifled little cry as she finds her climax. Head hanging, she slips off him and off the bed, taking her clothes and vanishing into the darkness of the flat again. _

_ She always does that, leaves him to finish himself off. It doesn't take long, not with the remembered heat of her around him and the insistent spice of her perfume still ingrained in his mind._

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><p>He still wakes from those dreams panting and half-hard, curled around the duvet like it's Sherlock's willowy body and he can prevent her from slipping out of his bed like a ghost. She did eventually start sleeping in his bed with him, realizing that he didn't mind the extra person in his bed. She eventually let him finish as well when she leaped on him in the middle of the night, once she realized that he enjoyed this as much as she did.<p>

He doesn't miss the sex as much as the rest of Sherlock. Yes, he misses the heat of her body, her long, delicate fingers, and the way she would curl her limbs around him while still being as naked as a jaybird. But that is what he misses, the post-coital sleeping with the detective wrapped around him.

Even if he wakes from the dreams of Sherlock leaping on him in the middle of the night to ravish him, the dreams he wakes from with tears in his eyes are worse.

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><p>"<em>Sherlock!" He leaps out of the car at the end of the road, despite the protests of Mycroft and Lestrade inside. Sherlock is still grappling with Moriarty at the edge of the cliff, her heels dangerously close to the edge and his weight looming over her. She looks almost feral, fighting for all she's worth against the mastermind. He has the advantage of height, however, and inches her closer to the edge. "Sherlock!"<em>

_ Her attention cuts to John for an instant, less than a breath, and her eyes widen in her pale face. Not because she sees him, but because that moment is the instant when Moriarty's weight finally becomes too much. She topples backwards, over the cliff, coat flaring like dark wings._

_ John immediately goes to run after her, but hands grab him, hold him back. Moriarty is going over the cliff as well; Sherlock still has a grip on him, despite everything, and now they are both plummeting over the edge. Moriarty is yelling, and Sherlock is screaming, and then... _

_ Silence. John lets out a cry like his heart is being torn from his chest and crumples to his knees. Lestrade is there, and Mycroft, holding onto his arms to keep him from throwing himself after Sherlock. Because they know, all three of them, that John will do it without thinking. He sags uselessly in their combined grip, suddenly unable to even speak. She's gone. Sherlock Holmes, that bright little spark in John's life, is gone._


End file.
